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James Reddick / The Record: Sophos researchers find “crude”, cheap ransomware tools being sold on the dark web, enabling inexperienced freelancers to easily launch attacks  —  Cheap ransomware is being sold for one-time use on dark web forums, allowing inexperienced freelancers to get into cybercrime without any interaction with affiliates.

Wall Street Journal: Internal draft: UK's ICO says Google's Privacy Sandbox falls short and leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy of users who should be anonymous  —  The Information Commissioner's Office said in a draft report that Google's proposed replacements for cookies have gaps that advertisers can exploit.

Raffaele Huang / Wall Street Journal: Apple removes WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China, saying it was ordered to do so by China's cyberspace officials citing national security concerns  —  China's cyberspace officials cite national-security concerns for targeting the Meta apps, Apple says

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Washington, DC-based Cape, which is developing a mobile service that doesn't ask for customers' personal data, raised a $40M Series B co-led by A-Star and a16z  —  AT&T's recent mega customer data breach — 74 million accounts affected — laid bare how much data carriers have on their users …

Ryan Morrison / Tom's Guide: Microsoft researchers introduce VASA-1, an AI model that creates a realistic talking face video from a portrait photo and an audio file, in research preview  —  Impressive lip-syncing  —  A new AI research paper from Microsoft promises a future where you can upload a photo …

Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast: Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on Llama 3, buying H100 GPUs for Reels, AGI, energy constraints, dangers of open source, the metaverse, Meta's custom silicon, and more  —  Caeser Augustus, intelligence explosion, bioweapons, $10b models, & much more  —  Mark Zuckerberg on:  — Llama 3

Bloomberg: Digital marketing software company Ibotta closes up 17% at $103.25 per share in its trading debut, after raising ~$577.3M in an IPO priced above marketed range  —  - Founder and CEO Leach to have 71% of the voting power  — Digital marketing firm's backers include Koch Industries arm

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Google says it will consolidate teams that focus on building AI models across Research and DeepMind, and move its Responsible AI teams in Research to DeepMind  —  Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL.O) said on Thursday it would consolidate teams that focus on building artificial intelligence models across …

Kris Holt / Engadget: Meta cuts the price of the base 128GB Quest 2 from $249 to $199, its second permanent price cut in four months, after a drop from $299 to $249 in January  —  The base 128GB headset will cost $199 from now on.  —  For the second time this year, Meta has given the Quest 2 a permanent price cut.

Todd Spangler / Variety: Netflix won't report subscriber numbers or Average Revenue per Membership starting in Q1 2025, saying time spent is its “best proxy for customer satisfaction”  —  Netflix will no longer report subscriber numbers — a key metric for streaming services for years — beginning with the first quarter of 2025.

Sarah Whitten / CNBC: Netflix reports Q1 revenue up 15% YoY to $9.37B, vs. $9.28B est., paid users up 16% YoY to 269.6M, vs. 264.2M est., and net income $2.3B, up from $1.3B YoY  —  LOS ANGELES — Netflix reported earnings that beat on the top and bottom line after the bell Thursday.  —  Here are the results:

Emilia David / The Verge: Meta claims both Llama 3 models beat similarly sized models like Gemini, Mistral, and Claude 3 on certain benchmarks; humans marked Llama 3 higher than GPT-3.5  —  Llama 3 currently features two model weights, with 8B and 70B parameters.  (The B is for billions and represents how complex …

Crystal Kim / Axios: A US jury finds Avraham Eisenberg, a crypto trader who stole $110M on the Mango Markets exchange in 2022, guilty of fraud despite his “code is law” claim  —  - He used the inflated futures holdings as collateral to borrow other cryptocurrencies on the platform …

Daniel Tencer / Music Business Worldwide: Short-form video app Triller is merging with Hong Kong financial services company AGBA; Triller shareholders will own 80% of the combined company valued at $4B  —  Financially troubled social media app and TikTok competitor Triller is merging with a Hong Kong financial services company …

Emma Roth / The Verge: DARPA reveals that an AI-controlled X-62A jet successfully faced a human pilot in an F-16 during an in-air dogfight test carried out in 2023  —  The US Air Force is putting AI in the pilot's seat.  In an update on Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Mozilla and CheckFirst report: Apple, Google, Meta, and others' efforts are a work in progress at best, months after EU's DSA mandated a searchable ads library  —  Efforts by tech giants to be more transparent about the ads they run are — at very best — still a work in progress …

Times of India: Noida, India-based B2B e-commerce marketplace ProcMart raised a $30M Series B led by Fundamentum and Edelweiss Discovery Fund, after a $10M Series A in 2022  —  Bengaluru: ProcMart, an online B2B marketplace focused on supply chain solutions, has secured $30 million in funding.

Anna Heim / TechCrunch: Berlin-based finmid, which makes embedded fintech solutions for SMBs, raised a €23M Series A at a €100M post money valuation, bringing total raised to €35M  —  Berlin-based finmid — one of the many startups building embedded fintech solutions, in its case targeting marketplaces …

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: South Korea-based AI startup Upstage raised a $72M Series B from investors including SK Networks and SBVA, formerly known as SoftBank Ventures Asia  —  Artificial intelligence startup Upstage secured 100 billion won ($72 million) from investors including SK Networks Co. and KT Corp. to bankroll …

Tim De Chant / TechCrunch: Kode Labs, which develops tools that integrate data from building management systems and IoT devices, raised a $30M Series B led by Maverix Private Equity  —  Like many immigrants, the New York City skyline was one of the first sights young brothers Edi and Etrit Demaj took in when they arrived in the U.S. more than 20 years ago.

Ellen Milligan / Bloomberg: Sources: the UK plans talks this month with Apple, Meta, and others to push a voluntary charter granting parents more control of social media use by young teens  —  - Ministers want Meta, Google to agree to more parental controls  — Government to launch social media consultation this month

Rachel Graf / Bloomberg: Mark Zuckerberg wins his bid to avoid personal liability in about two dozen lawsuits accusing Meta and other companies of addicting children to their products  —  US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing the cases, sided with the Meta chief executive officer in a ruling issued Monday.

Billy Perrigo / TIME: Google's Jigsaw expands Perspective API, a set of ML tools that help moderators and researchers identify toxicity, with seven attributes, including nuance  —  In the 1990s and early 2000s, technologists made the world a grand promise: new communications technologies would strengthen democracy …

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: EU antitrust regulators are questioning Broadcom about changes to VMware's licensing conditions, following complaints from EU business users and a trade group  —  U.S. chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO.O) is being asked by EU antitrust regulators about changes to newly acquired cloud computing company …